Ira Gitler

For more than three decades, Jack Maher published Down Beat, the world's most revered jazz magazine, guiding the Chicago-based publication and its parent company, Maher Publications, through oft-turbulent times. Yet despite increasing competition from rock-music magazines, cable TV and the Internet, Mr. Maher transformed a long-struggling journal into a profitable business and a champion of music education. Mr. Maher, 78, who was born and raised in Oak Park, died Friday of natural causes in Good...

For more than three decades, Jack Maher published Down Beat, the world's most revered jazz magazine, guiding the Chicago-based publication and its parent company, Maher Publications, through oft-turbulent times. Yet despite increasing competition from rock-music magazines, cable TV and the Internet, Mr. Maher transformed a long-struggling journal into a profitable business and a champion of music education. Mr. Maher, 78, who was born and raised in Oak Park, died Friday of natural causes in Good...

By Howard Reich. and Howard Reich is the Tribune's jazz critic and has contributed to Down Beat | July 10, 1994

"In the early '60s, it got really volatile, with the civil- rights movement. At one time, I had to pull the subscription cards out of the magazine (before it went to delivery) because we were getting 50 percent `You honkies' and 50 percent `You nigger lover.' " Adds Down Beat president Jack Maher, who took the reins after the death of his father, John, in 1969: "Sour grapes be damned. The cover is the vehicle used to get potential readers into the magazine. Down Beat has always championed jazz, which...

By Howard Reich. and Howard Reich is the Tribune's jazz critic and has contributed to Down Beat | July 10, 1994

"In the early '60s, it got really volatile, with the civil- rights movement. At one time, I had to pull the subscription cards out of the magazine (before it went to delivery) because we were getting 50 percent `You honkies' and 50 percent `You nigger lover.' " Adds Down Beat president Jack Maher, who took the reins after the death of his father, John, in 1969: "Sour grapes be damned. The cover is the vehicle used to get potential readers into the magazine. Down Beat has always championed jazz, which...

Musicians may be born, but they still have to be trained. And these days that often takes place in an academic setting. For local musicians and music educators in training that could very well mean a stint at the Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University. Most of CMC's enrollment consists of full-time students and nearly all of them receive some financial aid. It adds up to about $300,000 a year, which is one reason CMC's benefit concert, "Sweet Home Chicago," this...

Musicians may be born, but they still have to be trained. And these days that often takes place in an academic setting. For local musicians and music educators in training that could very well mean a stint at the Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University. Most of CMC's enrollment consists of full-time students and nearly all of them receive some financial aid. It adds up to about $300,000 a year, which is one reason CMC's benefit concert, "Sweet Home Chicago," this...

Trumpeter and band leader Red Rodney, known for his association with Charlie Parker, died of lung cancer Friday in his Boynton Beach home. He was 66. Mr. Rodney, whose original name was Robert Chudnick, was one of jazz's best improvisers, a trumpeter whose geniality on and off the bandstand belied his ability to form perfect, competition-crushing solos onstage. In his later years, he blossomed as a ballad player. He would take a melody and wring it for its meaning, using a soft, full tone and...

Stacy Rowles, a jazz trumpet and fluegelhorn player and vocalist who was the daughter of pianist and composer Jimmy Rowles, has died. She was 54. Ms. Rowles died Oct. 27 at her home in Burbank, Calif., of complications after a car accident, said her sister, Stephanie Rowles. A fixture in the Los Angeles jazz scene, Ms. Rowles played with such groups as Maiden Voyage, the Jazz Birds and Jazz Tap Ensemble. She also built a following in...

When Paul Sills envisioned The Second City, he was inspired by an art form nurtured in Chicago: jazz. In 1959 Sills tried to hire Chicago jazz pianist Fred Kaz. Second City, Sills explained, would "try to do what jazz musicians do onstage, among actors," Kaz once told the Tribune. Kaz wasn't available for Second City's piano job until 1965. But during the next 24 years, he sat at the baby grand accompanying John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, David Steinberg and uncounted...

Documentaries about jazz musicians are rare enough that one feels obliged to welcome any attempt. Robert Mugge's portrait of tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, titled "Saxophone Colossus," features good-sized swatches of Rollins in full improvisational flight and includes several interviews with its subject. But the results aren`t likely to satisfy Rollins` fans or provide those who don`t know much about his music with the kind of information they require. Mugge,...

Duke Jordan, a pianist whose work with saxophonist Charlie Parker endures in the jazz canon, died Tuesday in Valby, Denmark, a suburb of Copenhagen. He was 84 and had lived in self-imposed exile from the United States since 1978. His death was confirmed by Alistair Thomson, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Denmark. Mr. Jordan was regarded as one of the great early bebop pianists. The sound he helped create in the postwar era was something new in the American landscape, and it remains a...

In the jazz-book field, it's either feast or famine. And this year we have an apparent banquet of fine reading, even though not every book that looks good turns out to be worthwhile. Heading the list is Ira Gitler's Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s (Oxford, $22.50). As the book's subtitle suggests, Gitler has talked to most of the surviving major figures of the era, and the information he has gathered is as fascinating as it is historically...